Boko Haram’s triple attacks killing 150 raise more questions about Jonathan adviser Doyin Okupe’s claims government is winning the “war”
•Special report by Chido Nwangwu
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Almost 100 people are reportedly dead in a series of attacks in Nigeria believed to have been carried out by the Islamist sect Boko Haram.
Three major attacks in and near the north eastern town of Maiduguri underscore the rise in the lethal and bold attacks by Boko Haram. A car bomb and another near the scene of the first explosion took the lives of dozens.
Also, armed men with modern weapons struck in the town of Mainok; murdered 40 persons and destroyed parts of the city.
A few days earlier, Boko Haram radicals invaded a boarding school in Buni Yadi and murdered 59 children while they slept; many burned to death and those who attempted to escape faced the brutal agony of having their throats slit.
Meanwhile, the Senior Special Adviser to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, said on February 28, 2014 on Channels tv that despite the rise in the spate of attacks by the Boko Haram group, it signals the end of the insurgency. He said “From what is going on now, I believe very strongly that we are more or less in the dying phase of this insurgency. Also, the pattern seems to also follow the historical pattern of an exiting terrorist act.” Okupe compared the conflict between the Federal Government of Nigeria, the Boko Haram terrorist group and Nigerians to a game of football. He said “When you are playing against a very strong opponent and your goal keeper keeps away 20 or 40 shots and there are no goals but 2 minutes to the end of the match, the opponent scores one goal and you lose 1-nil, that is the one everybody remembers.”
He added that “I am also willing to admit that we are in a war situation. definitely, in a war situation and in a war situation, all sort of things do happen.”
In May 2013, after multiple acts of violent killing of people especially Christians, President Goodluck Jonathan sent additional soldiers to defeat Boko Haram; which so far, from all accounts, seem unsuccessful.
USAfrica News Index on Nigeria show that on March 5, 2013 in Kaduna, the Sultan asked President Goodluck Jonathan to immediately grant amnesty to all members of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, as a path to ending the violence unleashed on millions of Nigerians and foreigners by Boko Haram and its spin-offs.
On September 29, 2013 in obvious exasperation Jonathan expressed his frustration with Boko Haram during a church service at the National Christian centre to commemorate the 53rd Independence anniversary in 2013 that “Today you will agree with me that if you are in my shoes you will lack the words to say anything. We had this programme in mind and when we went to bed last night and agreed that we will all gather here to thank God for what he has done for this country. Only few minutes after midnight about twenty one students were murdered by a group that called themselves Boko Haram…. If you were wearing my shoes what comment will you have to tell Nigerians what message will you tell the parents of these young people, our future leaders who were killed at the College of Agriculture? Can you say that the killing of these students is political? Those students belong to which political parties? Will you say it was ethnic cleansing? Those students belong to which ethnic group in Nigeria? Was it religious? Those students were they Christians or Muslims or what? This is what we see on a daily basis. It is quite depressing….”
On Sunday February 16, 2013, Boko Haram’s assault on the village of Izge left 110 persons dead. More bloody and in-you-face decimation of villagers and murder of students have become part of the violent record of Boko Haram; with those actions complicating the national security capacity and tasks for President Jonathan.
A senior national security adviser to Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan indicated to USAfrica and USAfricaonline.com from Abuja this morning of Monday October 21, 2013 that the multiple, gruesome killings by Boko Haram especially between March and October 2013 reignited what remained the ongoing disagreements and debates within the Nigerian presidency between those who say that Boko Haram has been minimized and those who argue for an iron-fist, sweeping approach. The latter have contended against key leaders of Nigeria from the core old northern Nigeria.
Those who argue for accommodation and gradualist approach insist that Boko Haram is an inconvenience Nigerians will have to live with (as argued by President Jonathan). Within the presidency, those who agree with the President make the additional argument,
according to the USAfrica sources, that “a renewed aggressive engagement might push some of the populace to some level of sympathy” towards the side of Boko Haram.
The hardliners insist that the strong assault on the enclaves of Boko Haram the past summer of 2013 will only continue “to push them to the margins.” One of those whose influential voices demanded for a mediated coexistence with Boko Haram is the Sultan of Sokoto Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, a former soldier.
Abubakar, who is also the President-General of Ja’matu Nasril Islam, JNI, said in 2012 that he preferred amnesty, arguing “That problem can never be solved by drafting soldiers into cities where there is [a] problem – and in the process innocent lives were lost….”
USAfrica News Index on Nigeria show that on March 5, 2013 in Kaduna, the Sultan asked President Goodluck Jonathan to immediately grant amnesty to all members of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, as a path to ending the violence unleashed on millions of Nigerians and foreigners by Boko Haram and its spin-offs.
The USAfrica News Index on this issue and period (November 2011 to March 2013) show that Nigeria’s President initially, it seemed, strongly disagreed with the calls for amnesty for Boko Haram. On March 5, 2013, he insisted that “You cannot declare amnesty for ghosts.” He made those comments in the northern Yobe state capital Damaturu.
The embattled President argued, in contrast, that those who argue he should extend to Boko Haram a similar amnesty of financial and peace deals (his government has continued with militants from his home state and region) should note that: “In the Niger Delta, if you call them [the militants], they come and they will tell you their grievances; but Boko Haram, I don’t see anybody who says they are Boko Haram.”
Of course, the reality of Boko Haram exists around Abuja and the crises torn north east of Nigeria where the Islamic radicals use as their haven to fight “western education” and values.
IF the Jonathan presidency choses to minimize the raw, violent exertions of Boko Haram on Nigeria’s national security — especially as it affects business, investments and tourism, it may continue an awkward, bloody dance with the serially violent “ghosts” of Boko Haram. https://usafricaonline.com/2013/04/05/dancing-with-ghosts-of-boko-haram-president-jonathan-sultan-abubakar-and-nigerias-national-security-by-chido-nwangwu/
Somehow, the group of Islamic radicals and terrorists who President Jonathan dismissed as “ghosts” seem more violent than mechanized brigades of some standing armies.
As things stand, the residents of Nigeria’s north eastern Borno State and in fact the region are scratching their heads and wondering which “war” President Jonathan’s adviser Okupe is winning. The answer is blowing in the wind…. •Dr. Chido Nwangwu, moderator of the Achebe Colloquium
(Governance, Security, and Peace in Africa) December 7-8, 2012 at Brown University in Rhode Island and former adviser on Africa business/issues to the Mayor of Houston, is the Founder & Publisher of Houston-based USAfrica multimedia networks since 1992, first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper published on the internet USAfricaonline.com; CLASSmagazine, AchebeBooks.com, the USAfrica-powered e-groups of AfricanChristians, Nigeria360, IgboEvents, UNNalumni, and the pictorials site PhotoWorks.TV . He is completing a book titled Nelson Mandela and Chinua Achebe: Footprints of Greatness. He has been profiled by the CNN International for his pioneering works on multimedia/news/public policy projects for Africans and Americans. http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2010/07/29/mpa.african.media.bk.a.cnn
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Nigerian Governor’s comment ”Boko Haram are better armed and are better motivated” than Nigerian Army attacked by Presidency. https://usafricaonline.com/2014/02/19/nigerian-governors-comment-boko-haram-are-better-armed-and-are-better-motivated-than-nigerian-army-attacked-by-presidency-by-chido-nwangwu/
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Unheard of, comparing human lives to that of football game. Shame on you.